The Beautiful Fall

by Hugh Breakey

  She faced me in silence. Maybe she regretted opening the topic. ‘One show only,’ she said at last. ‘It would take weeks for us to set it all up, and then just eight minutes for the whole routine, lights up to curtain down. One song. No photos. No recording. That was the idea.’ As she spoke, something approaching a smile danced on her lips. For a moment, all the defensiveness and scorn left her. ‘The first few minutes he would dance, skimming over their surface, his feet gliding above them, touching only the stepping stones.’ She looked around the room with new eyes, as if conjuring a long-lost memory into this new setting.

  Not that it could be real memory, of course, since it had never happened. Or perhaps her words recalled some past speech, where an earlier Robbie—her Robbie—had spoken of his vision.

  ‘His hands would fly through the air as he spun,’ she continued, ‘missing the dominoes on the platforms and ramps framing the stage by millimetres. Then he would leap and—’ Her voice stumbled, her words grinding to a sudden stop, her eyes losing their wistfulness. A sigh followed, and she ploughed on. ‘One of the tiles would be struck, and the first lines would begin to cascade, falling in time with the dance. And the wave’s crest would flow out from his steps, racing ahead and then curling to wait as he spun across the stones towards them. All of it building to a climax as the final wave would approach him centre stage, and they would crash together.’ Her gaze shifted from the room around us, from memory and imagination, and to my eyes. ‘Eight minutes long. One show only. Just the single event, living only in the moment, and only in memory.’ She spread her arms, gesturing to the structure around her, and managed a small smile. ‘Imagine it.’

  As crazy as it sounded, part of me could imagine it. Each footfall like a splash into water, dominoes rippling out from it, each twist tracked by waves flowing out to every corner of the room, and then flooding back in, chasing the dance.

  ‘That’s what they’re for,’ she shrugged. ‘That’s the history.’

  I didn’t doubt she spoke the truth. No one could just make up a story like that. Besides, it fitted all the facts. But I hardly had any idea how I was supposed to respond. ‘That sounds…’ I searched for the word, but nothing quite right came to mind. ‘Weird.’

  Julie blinked. ‘Weird?’

  ‘I don’t mean I don’t believe you. I just meant the idea for the dance itself. It’s strange, right? That’s all I was saying. Not normal.’

  Her head started to shake, rotating side to side. But her eyes were fixed on mine. Her hands were trembling.

  ‘What?’ I asked. To think just a minute ago she’d had her hand on the doorknob. If only she’d left then. None of this was helpful.

  ‘I’ve been so fucking blind. I held on and on to the belief that the man I loved, and who loved me, would be strong enough to endure. I made myself believe there must be something, some splinter of soul, deep down that survives.’ She laughed bitterly, throwing her head back. ‘I thought I saw it in you. That day when you spoke about the beautiful fall and what you were planning with the dominoes, it felt like he still lived in there.’ Her eyes looked me up and down, her top lip curling into a sneer. ‘And even now, his fingerprints are all over you.’ Her body seemed crouched, poised in anger. ‘Look at your feet. Even now.’

  I looked down. ‘What about them?’

  ‘No wonder you had me fooled for so long.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s perfect. Always perfect.’

  My feet shuffled backwards involuntarily. She laughed and pointed down at them. ‘And again! From third to fourth! Perfect. Every fucking time.’

  I looked down at my feet again. Their position, the back foot not quite in line with the front one, the balance distributed between them.

  Now I could see it. She was right. It was perfect.

  With my gaze downcast, I caught the flurry of movement only out of the corner of my eye. Julie’s two palms slammed into my chest, knocking me backwards.

  She laughed and pointed again at my feet. The stance had changed, the back foot planted deep to catch my momentum and brace against her force.

  ‘And now! Perfect. Do you know how long it takes to imprint that on the body? How many years of dedication it took him? My Robbie.’ The name was a term of open scorn now. ‘When he was just cooking in the kitchen, going from the fridge to the stovetop, opening cupboards. Every moment a perfection of poise and posture, as he practised and practised.’ She put her hands to her head. ‘I’ve been falling for a ghost all this time, an after-image of something so perfect its shadow is beautiful.’ Her eyes scoured me, top to bottom. ‘Even now, you’re a work of art.’ She drew herself up to her full height. ‘Someone else’s art.’ Her words dripped venom. ‘Someone else’s work.’

  Silence fell. She seemed to be daring me to respond, but I could hardly think of a word to say.

  She shook her head. ‘The Robbie I knew deserved a better funeral than this.’ The tears were pouring down her cheeks. ‘Weird.’ She repeated my word again. ‘You’re not fit to wear his reflection.’

  I swallowed nervously. I should be glad she’d realised it wasn’t me she loved, just some relic she’d seen in my face and feet. This would make it easier for her.

  But the words cut.

  ‘So you win,’ she said, and her right hand wrapped around the ring on her wedding finger. ‘I give up on this crazy, stupid dream.’ She started to twist it off but it wouldn’t yield. ‘Fuck.’ She spat hard on her hand, smearing it on her finger. ‘I refused to believe the forgetting could beat us. But it has.’ She tried tearing the ring off again, twisting it as she pulled, and this time it gave way. ‘You are vanilla.’ She flung the ring into my face.

  I didn’t have time to flinch. It struck me on the cheek—a tiny stab of pain—and ricocheted away.

  Julie stopped short. She seemed surprised at what she had done. Perhaps she hadn’t meant to actually hit me with the ring. One hand drifted in something like an apologetic wave. Tears still shone on her cheeks, but they weren’t for me. Or for her. She mourned the loss of someone else entirely. I was just an uninvited stranger who had shown up at his wake.

  She hitched the bag over her shoulder and turned from me. The door opened to her touch. I hadn’t thought to lock it.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, her head down and facing away from me, her hand steadying herself against the half-open door. ‘You shouldn’t have had to hear all that. It wasn’t fair.’ She sighed. ‘None of it is your fault. I’m just tired, that’s all. At long last, I’m finally tired.’

  She left, and the door swung shut behind her.

  The strength that had been holding me up evaporated and I slumped to my knees. Her anger was hardly unexpected. I’d been prepared for that. But not for her scorn, or at the end, her tired pity. Her words still bounced around the walls of my mind, echoing.

  Vanilla.

  Someone else’s art.

  Someone else’s work.

  Each phrase bit into me in a way I could hardly understand. It should feel good that Julie had seen me for what I was. Good that she’d left me of her own will. Yet the words still burned.

  I struggled to my feet. I made it over to the door and slid the locks home, one by one. My chest felt like it was caving in on itself. I struggled just to breathe. Only a little over a week ago, I’d swung back this door to open my life to her. When our eyes met, she already loved me. Every day since that moment, she’d got to know me more and more, until finally we could part as strangers.

  I turned back from the door, and to the room. It all still stood there, the ranks of dominoes vulnerable but undisturbed. Through all the worlds and words and wars crashing above them, my little soldiers stood serene. As far as I could see, nothing had changed.

  As far as I could see, everything had changed.

  Just minutes ago, I hadn’t questioned what the dominoes stood for. Now, I could feel nothing of their significance. The beauty I had seen in them paled before the extraordinary performance Julie had evoked. No one had touch
ed them, yet they lay toppled.

  Something glinted in the shadows, just to the side of the path. Julie’s ring. I took a deep breath. The little metal band made an incongruous fit with its surroundings. My cheek must have taken all the force of Julie’s throw. Impetus spent, its tiny weight hadn’t been enough to dislodge a single tile.

  I picked it up, edging it carefully so as not to disturb the nearby dominoes. It felt almost like paying respect to another person’s project. To someone else’s hopes and dreams. Small as it was, the ring felt heavy in my hand. Julie had every right to be angry.

  My fist clenched on it. I had every right to be mad. This was her fault for piling betrayal on betrayal. It didn’t have to be this way. If she’d only been honest with me, everything might have been different. I felt like howling in frustration. Free of her? Right now, I felt more bound to her than I’d ever been.

  My hand tightened around the ring. I pulled myself to my feet and strode across the stepping stones to the platform Julie had set up this morning. Despite all her agonising, the work looked amateurish. The spacing of the dominoes was uneven, the curves clumsy. Her fingerprint in my sculpture.

  I plucked out the dominoes that connected the platform to the larger structure and swept my clenched fist through her work. Dominoes tumbled in every direction; in an instant, the entire platform was flattened.

  It took me a moment to realise the angry heat in my fist was actually pain. I watched a trickle of blood seep out between my fingers and drip onto the fallen tiles, moving like a live thing. I let go my grip: the ring gleamed at me through a film of blood. With the force I’d been squeezing, the claw that held the stone had cut through my skin and left a gash. It looked as if I’d been stabbed by a tiny dagger.

  Here was her real fingerprint.

  I rushed from the room and onto the balcony; held my fist outstretched above the rail. All of the pain and humiliation burning in my blood—I could destroy it all. Erasing every part of her from my life was as easy as opening my hand. Already her precious platform of dominoes inside had been destroyed. Now the ring. Next would be the pictures on the phone—hell, the phone itself, smashed to oblivion on the footpath below. And the scent of her, still smeared over my body: I could scrub it away. Everything could be destroyed and the slate wiped clean for the next chapter. Even the journal could be revised. I could eradicate her utterly. It was within my power.

  I breathed deep the hot, humid air and opened my hand up to the night, as if in offering. It wouldn’t do for my future self to be seduced by the ring, or by the captivating smile in the phone picture. How easy it would be for that future self to wonder what might have been; to try to return to this spot. He deserved to be protected. Julie deserved to be protected. She’d been through enough without having to fend off future Robbies who’d forgotten this bitterness, who had not lived through the barbs of her sadness and scorn.

  My palm tilted, rotating. For a moment, the ring held fast, stuck in the blood, until it finally slipped and tumbled out into space.

  No.

  My free hand flashed out as the ring fell, a dancer’s reflexes plucking it cleanly from the air. It would not be forgotten. Not one atom of it. The ring. The picture. The phone. And definitely not the journal. None of it would be touched. It was all my history, and my future deserved every part of it. No doubt the raw pain of this night would be forgotten in two days. I couldn’t do anything about that. But I could still pass on what remained of that life. Whether the memory of happiness or humiliation was worse as an inheritance, I didn’t know. But I didn’t have the luxury of such decisions.

  I stepped back from the brink and slipped the ring into my pocket. It would become another of my mementoes. In time it might fade in meaning along with them, until it seemed as inscrutable as the little wooden elephant.

  One last look into the dark, hot night. Somewhere out there, Julie was walking home, carrying her own memento of this disaster. The chilled bottle in her hand. If only she’d thrown that into my face instead of the ring. I’d gladly have worn the bruise.

  I thought about the impossible happiness she’d awoken in me hours earlier. I couldn’t explain it then, except to fumble at the thought that once upon a time we’d grown to fit one another. Nothing was any clearer now she’d gone. We had grown to fit; now each of us would have to grieve a lost half and learn to grow on our own.

  The eastern sky was still black, looming clouds blotting out the stars, when I went inside, pulled the mattress from the crumpled boxes onto the flat floor and collapsed.

  Day Two

  I woke late. For a moment my mind remained blissfully empty, rinsed clean. But then the memories washed in, and the pain stung as fiercely as before.

  JULIE HAD left for good, and that left me free—and this was what freedom felt like. My mouth tasted of acid. The scent of her clung to me. A shower did not remove it.

  There was nothing left to the day. Nothing worth remembering. Just nothing. Exercise happened, or something that had the shape of exercise. Coffee had lost its magic. My stomach twisted after half a cup, and I poured the rest down the sink. Putting food in my dry mouth just made the acidic taste worse. The remaining detritus of Julie’s visit was purged: the silver chain nestled like a tiny snake in my bedclothes, the two little notes I’d left for myself in my jeans and sock drawer, now redundant. Dominoes were laid and arranged, hands moving slowly through the work, clunking together clumsily. The nerves in my fingers seemed dull. Time crawled—grudgingly, as if it too had lost momentum.

  Julie’s claims about the purpose of the dominoes gnawed at me. But the letter had not actually lied. I checked: I could see how easily it had been misread. My former self had explained the task he’d developed, but the letter said nothing about how he’d acquired the dominoes. That was my mistake. Probably the dominoes had turned up unannounced on his doorstep, just as Julie said, and my predecessor had seized on a use for them. No one had lied. Still, the fact remained that 83,790 dominoes did not represent a record of any sort.

  But so what? It was still an achievement. I tucked the letter back in its envelope. Resisting a brief temptation to squirrel Julie’s ring away somewhere else, somewhere more obscure, I slipped it into the envelope beside the letter.

  The day passed and I kept working. By the time evening came, the ache in my head and the acid burning in my gut started to recede, as if some larger power had turned down the dial on everything. I was tired. I plonked down another line of dominoes and called it a day. There were only two cartons left now—just a little under forty-five hundred dominoes, plus the thousand or so piled in the dominoes room.

  And so the day passed. It was unmemorable. Which was appropriate, given the situation. Once, I’d feared the final day and what it would be like waiting for the end. Now the forgetting felt almost like an act of mercy.

  Day One

  Enough.

  I WOKE to bedsheets tangled tight around my legs. It shouldn’t have felt painful, but somehow it did.

  Grief gnawed at every cell in my body. I deserved the pain, I supposed, but my future self didn’t. It was the toxic burn of my choices and my wrongs, not his. I would leach them out of me with sweat and work. Things remained to be done before the new life could be born.

  It was early. Light glimmered through the curtains, but the morning sun had not risen far enough to attain its full force. I pushed away the weakness in my limbs and forced them through a double dose of my regimen, as if the burn of lactic acid and exhaustion could wash away the sting of losing her. Of sending her away. But I would do what had to be done. The end and then the beginning would probably happen tomorrow, and the final pieces had yet to be put in place.

  I dragged the two cartons of dominoes out into the kitchen and got to work flattening the crumpled mass of cardboard that had once been my bed, until it was all folded neatly against the wall. As I tidied up the kitchen—filing the recipe book away with the rest of the mementoes—I reached on top of the fridge and found
myself holding a document that needed a different sort of filing. The yellow envelope with the divorce papers, yet to be posted. The bridges were burnt but the legal process had not yet happened.

  It was Day One, so going outside was a risk. The forgetting, and with it the threat of institutionalisation, could strike at any time. But with so much already done to leave my future self a fresh start, I could hardly kick this can down the road. The documents must be sent today.

  I’d have to prepare as best I could. I piled everything of significance into the backpack. Alongside the precious document itself went the map home, the journal, the mementoes and the letter. If the forgetting struck before I made it back to safety, at least I’d be equipped to handle it.

  It was too early to go out yet. Saturday—the post office wouldn’t be open yet. I invested a few hours in the dominoes and then set out. The sooner this last task could be ticked off, the sooner I could return home, safe within my little cocoon.

  Outside, the clouds hung low and heavy. Still no rain, but the persistent cloud cover had finally mitigated the heat. The air smelled crystal clear, almost humming with electricity.

  The nearest post office was scarcely four blocks away. If I walked briskly the return trip should take about twenty minutes. The dark clouds overhead looked forbidding, and I didn’t fancy getting caught in it when the storm finally broke. Note to future self: buy an umbrella.

  Up ahead, as the post office came into view, I reflected that, this one last time, memory had served: the next time these feet walked these streets, it would all be new.

  Come to think of it, the same thing must have happened before. My past self would surely have taken this route when he went to post Julie the divorce papers. Just as I was now, he would have passed the shoe store, the charity shop, the bank, the gift shop…

  I stopped short, looking at the shopfront, taking in the display of figurines and tapestries, dreamcatchers, clocks and carvings. The hairs on the back of my neck shivered. The cool breeze had become a cold wind, whispering words from another life.